Genesis
by FluffleNeCharka
Summary: She wasn't always Ms. Frizzle, a weird teacher. She used to be Agent Frizzle, a psychic secret agent. But now her memories are coming back, of the life she left behind and the partner who saved her life. Psychonauts X-over, eventual Agent NeinMs Frizzle.
1. Chapter 1

Technically, she'd been killed.

That was what Agent Sasha Nein told Psychonauts Headquarters. She was dead. And they believed him, believed his report without question. He was an Agent in good standing, with a fairly good record. There was no reason for him to lie. His story matched up with eyewitness reports. There had been a fire, and then she was gone. That was the end of it. There was no way she could have escaped, unless she was microscopic at the time. The higher ups laughed at the thought, gave him a medal for the trouble of losing a partner, and called it done.

Psychic secret agents have a way of not dying when they should. She should have. She _would_ have. But he wouldn't let her, and so he risked his career, his sanity and his life for her. No one could ever know, or would ever know. It was a secret between him and her. The official records lied. She wasn't dead. She wasn't a pile of ashes somewhere. The reports lied, to a degree.

Agent Valerie Frizzle _had_ been killed.

But he'd done a fine job of bringing her back to life.

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She was new to the job, like he was.

She was dead serious and constantly frowning, the obnoxious voice of overkill. Later, agents would laugh at the idea of Sasha being the light hearted member of any team, but things were different then. She was severe and her hair was pulled into a tight bun. Her solemn expression served to hide any hint of beauty there was to be had in her pale skin and light red hair. She had graduated from the Academy alongside him, the very best empath they had. He had scored extremely high in General Psyche Knowledge; Sasha had the human mind mapped out and pictured in his head at all times. The two were put together for a few missions on a test basis. Their areas of expertise matched up on paper - that didn't mean, however, that they were permanent attached to each other. After six months together, they'd make that decision.

Agent Frizzle was not duly impressed with Sasha. She didn't like that he drank and smoke and swore so much. Constantly, it seemed, she spent the first two weeks of their partnership telling him he was going to shorten his lifespan. He argued back that if it wasn't hurting her, she had nothing to complain about. Out of respect, he smoked outside when he was working with her and never showed up to work drunk. The only thing he never quite got a handle on was his mouth. He seemed to rub off on people in that regard. Within a month, Agent Frizzle was muttering under her breath just like he had. She took great pleasure in informing him how he was going to blow their cover on undercover jobs and ruin them on diplomatic ones.

Yet she warmed to him, in her own way. The criticism became affectionate rather than brutal. The frown softened little by little into a slack, somewhat relaxed sort of expression. There was something about being partners in life or death situations that brought people together. After being shot at together, tracking down criminals together, and going to Russia, Italy and France together, they couldn't help but tolerate one another. It was more than that, though. There was a comradery in being psychics and being friends. The rest of the world did not understand them. The rest of the world seemed to view them as freaks. Together, they were just Sasha and Valerie. By the end of their first four months together, they were as close to friends as ultra-strict Agent Frizzle could come to the term.

Her mind was uncrackable. Just like his was shoved down from the average mini-world landscape to a series of cubes, hers was packed down into a series of blocks in hallways that went on forever. His first introduction into her mind left him speechless, and she stood beside him with a silent kind of pride only a Psychonaut knew. Her mental landscpae was impeccable, utterly controlled and flawless. There were no figments of her imagination, no mental cobwebs, nothing. Just a clean slate of a mind that suggested utmost sanity.

Even so, she was new to the job.

Things tend to go wrong with new people.

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In the Academy, they'd been taught that they were weapons.

Their minds held nearly seven times the brain activity of normal people. They had the potential to create fire, water, wind, to blast someone with raw aggression and to become invisible. Therefore they were the most valuable weapons the world had. It was their job to protect. First and foremost, to protect free thought, the most valuable asset on Earth. Second of all, to protect themselves, because everfy Psychonaut down was a grave loss. Thirdly came partners. Partners were weapons too, just as dangerous and intense. Yet there was a difference. The Academy said to save yourself before them.

Sasha had listened, but admittedly only absorbed part of it. He knew he was dangerous, as surely as he knew the Collective Unconscious was real and levitation was safe. He just didn't get the part about leaving someone for dead. He couldn't. It wasn't in him. All his life, from the day he ran away from home in Germany to now, he'd been on a continual run from everyone and everything that mattered. Once Sasha was assigned Agent Frizzle, he questioned the idea of leaving a partner behind even more. He doubted she would leave him. He heard what the professors said and he retained that knowledge, he just refused to apply it to his life.

It was one thing to say it, another to do it. In the heat of a fight, injured and screaming commands and hurling bolts of energy at people, it would be all too easy to look after himself. The idea was always there, looming, tempting. He fought it. He was going to be the partner that didn't suck. He was going to be the partner that didn't have an ego the size of a circus. He threw himself in front of attack after attack for her, saved her at the last second from blast after blast she never saw coming. Her other half. The defense to her offense. Her partner.

She repaid him in full.

The fire was raging. The whole town was ablaze. With people running to and fro, screams everywhere, people still stuck in buildings, and a mad pyrokinetic continuing to burn all that he could, it was easy to be distracted. It was easy not to notice things in the thick black smoke and the noise of explosions, alarms and screams. He didn't see the pyrokinetic take aim at him, nor did he catch sight of another fireball among the infernos. Agent Frizzle did. She didn't have time to scream as she shoved him out of the way, knocking him over in the process. What happened next took both of them by surprise.

There was a flash of lightning in the fire, which reached out to slam through her. Only it wasn't lightning. It was psychic energy. She howled and shrieked and clutched at her head like a madwoman. In that moment Sasha Nein damned free thought, himself and the whole of the Psychonauts. He scooped his partner into his arms, lifted her head up gently and tried to talk to her. It soon became apparent she was in too much agony to hear him. She screamed and screamed until she was hoarse, finally dropping to the ground as if totally dead. Sasha looked over at the pyrokinetic and felt more fury rage in him than he thought was possible.

It took one shot to kill the man, and as firefighters rushed in to do their job, Sasha crept, invisible and silent, through the town, his partner cradled against him. All those radical theories he'd done papers on and all those inventions he'd shown off were about to prove their worth.

Sometimes weapons were the last thing anyone needed.

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The bus was the pride of his inventions.

It came to him that night, and flew them back to his lab deep in the mountains. No one ever had time to register he was gone. The bus was designed to be under the radar, like a stealth plane. On top of that, it shrank the two humans and itself down to the size of a fleck. No one saw a thing. Sasha affectionately patted the bus, muttering a thanks to it, before turning his attention on his fallen partner. It was strange to see her unmoving, silent. It was as if she were asleep.

The next four hours were a blur for him. Getting her heartbeat back came first. Her lungs were stimulated with a simple application of CPR. Taping chunks of psitanium to her head was all he could do to stabilize her brain activity, which bounced between half normal human capacity and fourteen times human capacity as he frantically searched through the bus's compartments. Keeping her on a steady mixture of oxygen and sleep gas was critical. There was no way to tell how much damage could be done if she woke up right now. If she were to confuse the real and mental worlds, as many a fallen agent had, she would go completely insane. For now, this was all he could do. That, and clean her up. Germs were going to be a very serious problem for someone in her state. Finally, after four hours of flight and work, they arrived at his lab.

Without any explanation to Ford Cruller - the rogue Psychonaut would be suspicious, but it'd have to wait - Agent Nein placed Agent Frizzle inside a pod in the isolation center, letting her rest. It would be a long time before she would be able to be allowed to wake up. Until her brain activity stabilized, she was in constant danger. His only consolation was that the bus had become strangely loyal to her, seeing her so close to death. It always found its way from the parking lot to just outside the isolation center. Though there was no real parking to speak of, it stayed in the area most of the time. As months passed and it seemed she wasn't going to get better, it began to worry. It expressed as much to Sasha telepathically.

"If she ever wakes up, you'll be hers," the German man promised, stroking the bus's face absently. "You are the pride of flock, after all."

It merely tooted in response.

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A year passed before she was stabilized.

A year of a new partner. A year of pretending Agent Frizzle was dead. A year of lying that no, he had no idea where all that psitanium went. A year of test tubes, feeding bags, and oxygen supply to someone who very well might be insane upon waking. An entire year of lies, cover ups, fake paperwork, and constant denial of what he knew to be reality. In that year he'd had to go into the mental world and seal off her door to the collective unconscious. He felt bad disconnecting her from everyone else's subconscious, but he couldn't risk someone stumbling upon her and driving her insane. In that year he managed to get her blood pressure, heart rate and lung capacity back to normal while simuletaneously going off on missions every other week. In that year he went to Spain, Portugal, China, Egypt and Thailand, yet all he ever thought about was the pod and whether or not it was holding up alright.

Once she was stabilized, he was almost terrified to go into her mind to assess the damage. His stern, familiar partner might not exist any more, for all he knew. A part of him said he should've given up on her a long time ago when she died. This was the same as bringing someone back from the dead and _then_ considering the moral applications of the action. One look at her convinced him he was doing the right thing. He couldn't abandon someone in her current state. Gently placing the mental doorway on her head, he took a deep breath and prepared to enter his partner's mind.

Technically she'd been killed.

In actually, by the time a year passed, she was more alive than ever.

Ms. Frizzle was alive.


	2. Chapter 2

She was insane.

Her mind was like a child's, vast and sprawling and straightforward. There were hidden passages and memories locked away and a disturbing amount of color. He called out for her, but her astral projection didn't come. Her mind was still recovering, then. Carefully examining the layout of her mind, he found nothing that suggested damage done to her psyche. It had reverted to its original form, yet other than that there was no damage. No nightmares, no manias, no waking dreams. Just a simple, child's mind riddled with secret passages, hidden hallways and tunnels. A complex child, then. Still, there was something wrong.

Almost all of her memories had been locked away. While he could access then - he had a degree in this field, after all - her access to them was utterly shut off. Huge chunks of her life would remain impossible for her to recall. When she woke up, she wouldn't remember him or the Academy or that she was psychic. She would wake up with her memories up until about age twelve. After that it would all go totally blank for her. Agent Nein debated with himself as to whether or not he could restore more of her memories. It would be risky. It might overload her system as it was now. In a few years, perhaps she would begin to remember things on her own. As it was, she had come out of this with a clean slate.

No memories. No personality left. No mental blocks or guards. She was just like a child. In browsing through her memories, he'd seen she'd always wanted to be a teacher. She'd given up on that idea when her psychic powers came to surface. But now they were locked away, and all she had left was telepathy. She could pass for normal now. Agent Nein idly thought the best thing for her was to pursue that dream. Certainly she couldn't stay here for any longer without someone realizing the truth. She would need the care of her family, though, to be able to function for the first few months as she adjusted to her mental state.

Her family - that was a problem he'd never considered before. They'd been told she was dead. How could he explain this to them? How could anyone ever hope to explain the process of what happened to non-psychics? He spent a long night with former Agent Cruller debating the issue, and they finally decided the best thing to do was to have Sasha present her to them as not dead, but insane. She'd certainly be acting to fit the part, without her memories and personality in tact. They would take it from there. No one would ever think to question him as to why they'd been lied to about her death. Psychonauts were not to be questioned, just obeyed. Agent Nein was well aware that it was possible the Agency might catch on, might find her out. It didn't matter. They couldn't do anything with an Agent who barely recaleld her name and had next to no powers. Whatever her new personality became, it would further convince them she wasn't Psychonaut material.

After all, technically, she was insane.

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It was another four years before he saw her again.

He paid for her college quietly, discreetly, transferring money into her account on a regular basis. Not jaw dropping amounts. Just enough to get her through. She graduated in three years flat, stunning everyone with the sheer knowledge she had that enabled her to finish so fast. Sasha was not in the least bit surprised. Fractured psyche or not, she'd always been brilliant. What surprised him was the person she had developed into from the shell of a woman he dropped off years ago. It was a slow process, as was to be expected. Given the trauma she'd been through, he would have expected a solemn woman similar to Agent Frizzle. Instead, he found someone different entirely.

She was vibrant and loud. She wore colorful clothes and strange earrings and jumped into things. Gone was the frown, the glare, the stare of an Agent. She laughed with her friends. She watched children's cartoons and discussed them with kids in a totally non-ironic manner. She had a pet lizard. She was unafraid of taking chances. All traces of an analytical Psychonaut were gone, replaced by this childlike woman who played in the rain and talked with animated gestures. She treated the students in her class with utmost respect, and more than that she loved them. She cherished them. She loved life. There was no trace, not even the faintest, of who she'd been when he met her.

He felt a bit choked up at the sight. She was going to be okay. Everyone had thought she was going to die in the line of fire, and here she was doing her dream job in her hometown. A sense of relief flooded over him. How many nights had he spent lying awake, desperately wondering if he'd done something wrong and she wasn't going to make it? How many times had he had to resist coming over here in person to check? But it was all for not. She was fine. She was better than fine, actually, she was thriving here. She had friends, family, and students. He was no longer needed... And he wouldn't have it any other way.

The four years of fearing for her sanity were over at last.

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He knew he was bordering on being a stalker.

He also knew she wasn't quite right. She wasn't aging properly or getting any fatter. The psitanium had removed both capabilities from her, which meant certain foods high in fat would be near toxic to her. He knew she had been a last second rescue, the miracle science experiment. He hadn't been fully equipped to help her. She was extremely lucky to be alive. She hadn't escaped unscathed, though. There were consequences to his actions, and her life weighed upon his mind. This was his fault, his responsibility. If anything happened to her, it was on his head. The thought of her dying because of his bad science was enough to terrify him.

All his life, he had been a scientific person. He liked technical manuals and textbooks and classes that involved labs. He relied upon body language science classes to tell him how people felt. Mental mapping science told him what he was feeling. He believed in science like other people believed in God. Now he was faced with the flip side, that science had only come so far. He was a fool. He never should have acted so hastily. In his guilt, he started sending her money again, not caring if it was enough to raise her eyebrows. No matter what he did, he was nothing more than a shadow to her. She'd never be aware of him. His own science had programmed her to be that way.

Every so often, he would use his clairvoyance to check in on her, to see what she was doing. She really was much better off without him. Yet he couldn't be a good Psychonaut and move on with his new partner. He couldn't just trust in Agent Milla Vodello like he had Agent Frizzle. He couldn't build up the familiarity with the second he'd had with the first. Then again, Milla was perfectly healthy. Ms. Frizzle was a walking time bomb of unknowns.

Maybe it wasn't stalking, come to think of it.

It was guarding.

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Denial was a wonderful thing.

He was so drunk, so drunk he was amazed he hadn't passed out. Agent Vodello was tugging on his arm, smiling gently, trying to get him to leave the bar. But he was in no mood for it tonight. Tonight he wasn't his usual happy drunk self. He was vividly depressed, more than he'd ever been in his life. The implications of what he'd done had hit him. He'd never see Agent Frizzle again. He'd never hear her call him a drunk or tell him he'd messed up his paperwork again. And he sobbed, for the first time since he was four. Agent Vodello hugged him, not understanding what he meant, thinking Frizzle was dead, just like everyone else did.

At this point he could've admitted maybe his partner had always meant something more to him. He could've admitted that Agent Frizzle had been a joy to work beside because she was the only one smart enough to get him. He could have admitted her looked at her smooth white skin and soft ginger hair in a way that was distinctly not Agency approved. He could've admitted he saw Agent Vodello the same way after a few years, that he was awful at adhering to regulations regarding co-workers. He could have. He didn't. Agent Frizzle was gone now, replaced by a woman who didn't know he existed and was infinitely more happy that way. Agent Vodello was spoken for. He was a failure.

So he washed down all his problems until Milla Vodello finally knocked him out for his own good and drove him home. In the morning he would smoke a few cigarettes, drink a shot before work, and pointedly pretend the whole thing hadn't happened. She would ask him how his night was and he would pretend that he was fine. Across the country, Ms. Frizzle would go to class and teach while trying to firmly pretend that she was fine and missing most of her memories didn't matter. He would come home from work and work his way through a six pack of beer. Agent Vodello would tell everyone he was fine. Ms. Frizzle would grade papers and watch cartoons. The world wasn't allowed to see the cracks in the surface. They were all fine. Never better. They were okay.

And they were all in deep denial.


	3. Chapter 3

She wasn't happy.

Well, she was, more or less. She had a good life, really. Friends, wonderful students, a family that supported her, but there wasn't everything there could be. There was a distinct gap between her memories. She started out trying to ignore it, and it was easy at first. Her life was a whirlwind of adventures and fun school days. All day, it was the farthest thing from her mind. It was only at night, lying awake in her bed, that it was a problem. Only when she couldn't push it away anymore did it become obvious to her how little she had. She told herself it didn't matter. Her life really was everything she could've wanted. Why should she be unhappy because of this?

The problem wasn't unhappiness, though. It was her curiousity. Even her students had picked up on her total inability to pass up knowledge. She liked learning about things and hated not knowing them. Sometimes her mind would suddenly supply her with the inner thoughts of someone, as if to ease her along, and she had found she really could read minds some days. Other people's, anyway. Her own was a much bigger problem. She hated not knowing what had happened. She knew something had to have gone on, something big. Ms. Frizzle had read psychology books in an effort to figure it out. She figured that there had to have been some sort of event that made her block these things out. The problem was that she had no idea what, and the curious part of her was dying for an answer.

She found herself often surprised at what she knew. From robotics to electricity to the human body, none of this was covered in her college classes. It just came to her, facts she'd long known popping up from the depth of her mind. The brain, in particular, was one area she could outdo high school teachers in. The words flowed out of her mouth like she'd known all along what made things tick. Ms. Frizzle was the envy of other teachers. They thought her incredibly educated, perhpas holding a Masters degree in something without telling them. She laughed and waved the compliments away, not revealing that she had just as little idea as they did where it was all coming from.

Certain things triggered more knowledge than others. The human brain. Kirilian photos. Beer. And German. There was something about German that set her off and she knew she was on the right track. She found that she was fluent without even trying, something she didn't even know was possible. Ms. Frizzle was so sure it was important, but she didn't understand why. She went to the library and found that she knew everything in college level textbooks and books on the paranormal and that she could understand the titles of German books without any translation needed. Where had she ever picked up these things? She could have sworn she'd read these things before and been here before and done this and that before - but _when_? It was a whirlwind of things significant yet somehow completely without meaning.

Eventually she accepted that this was just how it would always be.

But she wasn't happy about it.

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He wasn't always sure what to do, with her.

Maybe she would have been better off without his interference. Her body's entire internal structure had been altered. She couldn't handle fatty food or too much sugar or certain specific foods that, he was sure, she'd end up eating and having violent allregic reactions to. Her body wasn't aging, and Sasha knew that eventually, someone would question why. If psitanium could leave Ford Cruller unaged for 30 years, there was no limit to what it could do to someone younger and more easily affected by it. Right now, in her early thirties, there wouldn't be much a problem, but by the time she hit her 50's people would be catching on.

The biggest risk he'd taken with her, however, was not connecting her to the collective unconscious. With her mind disconnected, it was easy for her to grow mentality unstable and succumb to delusions of grandeur. And between her shouting of mottos, wearing loud clothes and constant loudness, Sasha didn't need a degree in psychology to know she was already out of touch with reality. But connecting her to the collective unconscious would threaten to give her all her memories at once, which could drive her so insane there was no saving her. He debated what to do, and it all came down to one final question: Should she get her memory back?

She was happier this way, wasn't she? She had friends, family, a job that she truly wanted, a home to go to each day after work that far surpassed Psychonaut housing. But she was lost, without so many years of her life that it left her wondering. Was it really right to leave her wondering forever, with no respite or answers? Was it right to give her back memories of a job she'd been forced into, missions wherein she'd been beaten within an inch of her life? Every psychic fought, for years, to control their powers and manage them. Every psychic knew the weight of being an outcast even though they were admired, an oddity even if they were normal. Was it really the right thing to do, to blindside her with that responsibility that had made her so miserable before?

But if it were him, he'd want to know anyway. And it was inhuman to leave her mind so blank. Frustrated, he decided to connect her mind to the collective unconcious for a few days, just to see what would happen. If she began a rapid recall, he'd have to stop her. If she recalled nothing, he still couldn't leave her connected for too long. He groaned, imagining all the things that could go wrong.

Well, at least he was doing something, he supposed, even if he didn't know what to do.

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Sunglasses.

Her mind whirled into action, and she brought forth a memory from sheer force of will, unwilling to let it go. Sunglasses, dark gold. Always on his face, always obscuring his eyes, making his face hard to read. The next thing to surface, as if through a fog, was his face. God, that awful strand of hair that kept falling in his face, outside the orderly bowl cut the rest of his hair formed, drove her nuts. She remembered batting it away, pushing it aside constantly and even cutting it off in a series of movements too fast for him to protest. Though his glasses made his eyes impossible to see, she was sure he glared her down for that one.

There had been brief moments where he'd been without them. Usually when he was asleep, eyes closed with that typical clueless expression people got when they slept. She couldn't remembered how he looked with his eyes open. She just _remembered_ a flurry of little moments that threatened to overwhelm her and knock her down. He was tall and thin and she had constantly argued with him about his weight. She'd dragged him to dinner once. He'd locked her in their hotel room once to prevent her from following him - wherever he was going it was dangerous and he was having no arguments. He'd been by her side constantly. Did he work with her? He did, didn't he? They'd had a screaming, throwing things fight once where it ended with someone calling and telling him his father died. She'd held him, awkwardly. There had been silence as he slowly wrapped his arms around her and pointedly looked away, eyes hidden through dark lenses and his breathing deep.

It all fell into place with that. Her powers. The sunglasses she'd been looking at floated effortlessly into the air, and so did she. Gravity faded away as Ms. Frizzle, Agent Frizzle, bumped into the ceiling, holding her knees to her chest. _This is Agent Sasha Nein, fresh from Germany…_ **Oh dahling, you two will make such a good team!** I may be eight but I can still levitate, dad. Agent Frizzle taught me. _I will not reassign you, you need him._ **Promise me we'll stay in touch after we graduate? You could visit me in Rio….**

Hands, on her forehead, calming her, soothing her, long ago when her body was like lead and her mind was nearly gone. A voice, German accented, whispering. _I'll take care of you. That's what partners do, you know._

She falls to the floor painfully, with a loud thud. She's back, she's here. For a long time she doesn't move, eyes staring longingly at the object across the room that had caused all this. It floated to her, falling into her hands easily. Sunglasses. Her eyes shut tight.

"Sasha..."

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	4. Chapter 4

Life had been hard for him, as a child.

His father was so hollow after his mother died, so quiet and reserved. Empty. Everything was empty and meaningless. He went to school in a haze of routine. He answered questions before they were asked, dodged any ball thrown at him ("I swear, it's like it moved or something!") and he sensed his father's depression. He was a telepath; he drowned in other people's emotions. His father's sobs echoed through his son's mind, the pain seared through them both, and finally Sasha couldn't take it. He was dead inside, desperately trying to shut off his own mind in an attempt to find peace. At age twelve, however, it was all too much. He'd snapped.

He'd left, without a word to his father. Without a word to his aunt. He'd wandered, and drifted, and mastered his powers. He'd used them to get food and get cigarettes and just scrape by, until he'd found himself in America. The Psychonauts found him. He'd done something awful, of course; psychics were only noticed if they hurt someone. But by then he could sense their intent and focus in on people until their deepest, innermost thoughts, things they hadn't thought of for years, were there for him to read. He could shut people out so hard that trying to telepathically reach for him was impossible. His aim was eerily accurate. That little boy was long gone. He was deadly then. He was also so shut off no one ever knew the things he'd done. A little bit of drugs, a lot of alcohol, a lot of smoking. And all the dingy, backwater bar activities those things entailed - he'd done things he'd never forget as hard as he would try later on. He wasn't some little angel like Milla Vodello with a great life and lots of charity and generosity to speak of, and he wasn't a legacy inheriter like Truman Zanotto. He was and, too a degree, will always be a product of the city streets. Ironically it wasn't as awful as any of them had pictured. He'd enjoyed it immensely, some days. The problem was that when seventeen year old Sasha Nein was arrested and brought in to the Psychonauts, he was totally out of control.

He'd struggled to find control, a sense of it at least. He needed to be able to control things and make sure they would work according to plan. So he mastered his powers long ago. He was so mentally sound that when he'd been captured on a mission once, confusion grenades to the head hadn't shaken him. He could go invisible for an hour flat. He could telekinetically reach things several hundred feet away. Control? Sasha Nein _was_ control after a few months. He _was_ logic. His whole being was made up of these things, the sum of his parts, so to speak. Nothing ever happened to him that he couldn't change, work around, or get through. He needed no one. Agent Nein was not weak, but at the same time he wasn't whole or happy, either. His emotions were locked away, sealed down so deep no one would ever see his radical side again. He forced down all those parts of him that liked to act like a random spazz. Sasha was logical, facts, technical terms and official names only. He could be snarky and smirky, or thoughtful and distant, but either way he was simply controlled.

Then there had been her.

She overruled him, outdid him, out smarted him. She lectured him, tightened up procedures on him, made sure things were clockwork. And he hated her. Dear God, he hated her. She was an awful woman, horrifying in her diligence. But he loved her, because lurking beneath the surface was a hollowness that matched his. She was cold. She was detached. She was more controlled than he ever would be. She was like a robot. Valerine Frizzle was less of a person than him, somedays. She was hurting inside like him, putting up defenses so thick no one could ever find her. Truthfully a more at peace person would have survived that faithful night without any complications whatsoever. If she'd been alright to begin with, she'd be here beside him right now, a constant in his life instead of a secret. If she'd been just a bit more real, she'd have been okay, but she wasn't ever real.

This, what she has now? _This_ is real. Always has been, always will be. The laughter, the insane clothes. They can all think her loony. They call her out of her mind. She'll still laugh now, openly, a sound that takes his breath away and makes his mind stop. She can be as silly and childish as she never got to be, because underneath it all he's sure her family would never have let her do this before. This is her, as much as the sun is fire or the ocean is water. She is more real and full now than she's ever been in her entire life. He hesitates, pondering going invisible, but it's too late because he's in the school, in the hallway, outside her door, and she spots him.

She freezes. He waits for her face to twist in anger now that she remembers. He waits for her to scream at him, to blame him for taking away her powers, her career, her memories. Instead her face lights up and, not saying a word to the class, she throws open the door. With a delighted, "Sasha! It's you!" she throws her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder. He smells hibiscus flowers, for some odd reason, like the ones on her earrings and dress (where _does_ Frizzle get her clothes?) and leans into her. His eyes close and he indulges in the kind of embrace they were never allowed to have before.

"Valerie," he murmurs, and with that all professionalism comes soaring back into him. The embrace ends, he crosses his arms and looks at her sternly, though his face is half hidden by his glasses. "We need to talk. Soon. Can I meet you here after class, or-?"

He's cut off by her beaming at him. "Of course! Meet me here at three!" And she kisses him on the cheek, a darting motion that stuns him. "See you later, sweetie!"

Despite his training and moral stance against reading minds, sometimes emotions are so strong that they're like red flags in a sea of gray, and he turns. Another teacher, a man, is staring at him. Shocked. Looking and feeling ill. Hurt. Confused. Betrayed. He loves the insane madwoman of a teacher. Sasha feels it, breathes it in like air. The poor man is beyond confused and his thoughts are so scattered that the Agent doesn't bother reading them. He doesn't try to set things right either. At this point the whole last few years have blown up in his face and Agent Valerie Frizzle just acted like a schoolgirl whose long lost best friend had just come back. Putting his hands in his trenchcoat and walking away, Sasha knows that today, he'd believe anything, control and logic be damned. A zombie raptor could come rampaging down the highway or Agent Vodello could give up disco, and he would not be surprised. Now is _not_ the time to do damage control; he'd make it worse.

He pulled directions from someone's mind to help him a coffee shop with outdoor tables. There he sat, smoking and drinking coffee. Reliving the past reunion in his head, again and again. She wasn't mad at him for what happened. She probably didn't have the whole story yet, then, or else it might've just been that her current happy state of mind wouldn't let her be angry with him. Quite possibly she was happier here than she'd ever been, and so she'd forgiven him. She certainly seemed to love teaching, squealing about an adventure, taking chances and getting messy. Her enthusiasm was catchy. Her face was bright and lit up, her eyes shiny, her body relaxed. This was the best time of her life. On some level he regretted entering it, breaking her out from her routine. But if she was willing to give him a chance… he frowned to himself, thoughtfully. Then what? Be her friend, after all these years? Be something more? Tell her what had happened?

His eyes closed under his glasses, and he massaged them with one hand while sipping coffee with the other. An observant eye would have noticed that his cigarette re-lit and found its way into his mouth without his hands being involved. He stared into the coffee, wondering what exactly he'd come here to accomplish. The happy woman who'd tackled him was hardly a ghost of Agent Frizzle. She was none of his business, he realized with a cringe. She had a man who pined for her, a simple minded one without FBI level clearance or psychic powers. She had a job that was her life's dream.

But she didn't have a past. And as much as Agent, man in his late thirties with a cold shell around his heart, would love to leave, Sasha, man in his late thirties with an unhealthy amount of concern, can't. He owes her the past, the truth. Sasha is, was and would always be her partner. Partners help each other. He sighed softly.

Just because he wasn't a child, didn't mean life wasn't hard anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

He feels her presence all over.

It's like a beacon, a siren that draws him in closer and closer. It's been forever, and he continuously looks her over as if she might vanish into thin air. She doesn't feel it. Her powers are bursting and flaring up, unstable and untrustworthy. She doesn't feel the same unbreakable connection that he does – that calm that washes over a Psychonaut when their partner is near. Rather, his presence fills her with energy, something she already had in spades. There is something very morbid, he thinks, about feeling such a bond and not having it returned. Still, he can't shut it out. He feels it in him like a pulse.

"Valerie."

It's been forever, too long. It's been long enough that he can't look away, long enough he knows he's in too deep right now. For the sake of his sanity he should run like hell and never look back. She's become more than just a rescue mission now. He's gone too far in this, in this entire bad idea. He knows more about her than anyone else on the planet. He holds her life in his hands. Her sanity, her powers, her memories are all his to do with what he pleases. This has gotten way out of hand. This probably falls under the category of stalkery, insanity, something not quite right. If he were a smarter man, he would end this right here and now.

He stays. He can't help it. The object of his obsession has grown too near and dear to his heart. If they were caught now, it would all fall to pieces. They would evaluate and reinstate her. He would be demoted if not thrown out altogether. He could be charged with any number of things. Kidnapping, tampering with memories without consent, entering a mind without due cause, gross misuse of psychic power. There could even be a case made for negligence, as he'd allowed her to go at this by herself for far too long to justify his actions. This was, of course, without taking into account the radiation the psitanium had given her, which would violate a dozen health codes on its own. God, he feels stupid and foolish right now. So much for helping her out.

Why is he so close to her? He doesn't want to be. Certainly he'd never planned on this. She wasn't the person he was supposed to love. Everyone expected him to love Milla, to marry her, to move on with his life. He'd tried, too, just not hard enough. Milla Vodello is a darling woman. Valerie is bizarre. Off. Not quite right. Milla is certainty. Valerie is a time bomb. Logic dictates he shouldn't be here, at her school, sitting awkwardly and watching her closely. He should be off somewhere with his Brazilian partner, chatting idly about their jobs, mindless and normal. This isn't normal. This isn't right.

And yet it is. For the first time in years his mind is calm even as his thoughts race. He relaxes as his brain screams panic at him. This is the bond of a partner, the bond between psychics, and it is so powerful that he can hardly stand it. The urge to touch her hand runs through him. Sasha breathes in deeply, trying not to remember it all. He wants to let her down gently, because he won't let her become unhappy and dead inside like she used to be. He has lost the battle for his own self control, but he won't surrender hers to himself any longer. It is time to let Valerie Frizzle act independently of him, move on, cut off that obnoxious heartfelt link. If her mind had just stayed neatly shut, she'd be fine. Now he has to try and ignore what he's feeling. The fact that it's for her own sake is, he thinks, supposed to help him. This is supposed to be hard yet doable.

So why is he fighting so hard to get his words out?

"You do realize it's over between us, right?" are the first words out of his mouth when he regains some measure of control over himself. He does not look at her, or even look to see if she's listening. (She is. He can feel it. If he breathes deep and tries he can sense where she's looking down to the exact object.) "Your life is here now. You can't come back. You're retired, so it's not as if this means anything."

"Ah, I don't think so!" she sang the last two words, beaming brightly at him. "If it was, you wouldn't be here right now."

Despite his blue-green colorblindness, he focuses on the grass and sky. He wants to say something. He should say something, anything, shut her up, shoot her down, reject her. Sasha briefly wonders if perhaps he has gone completely insane. Telepaths were always the first to go, right? Maybe this is just him going mad. Then he glances at the cactus and planet print dress Valerie has on and decides that no, he's not quite mad. This is sick and wrong, but he's not insane. So he has to keep this together, for both of them.

_Oh, fuck it,_ he thinks suddenly, and on sheer impulse, he kisses her.

There are two things happening right now. One is that his brain is screaming at him. He's a moron, this is dumb, this is stalking, this isn't right, he could lose his job, blah blah blah. The other thing that's happening is that he's completely forgetting that in a sea of psychic sensation. There is a reason psychic children are so eager to kiss one another and so rarely do anything else. Even in adults, the fact remains that putting two brains so powerful so close together generates a kind of euphoric electricity, a paralyzing energy that shuts out the rest of the world. He can't think. He can't even breathe. Everything ceases to matter.

She pulls away triumphantly. "I told you this means something." Her hands intertwine with his. "Just because I'm a little teeny weeny bit different now doesn't mean this can't work."

"I stalked you," he pointed out, stunned. "That's not right. I should probably be locked up or something."

"You meant well," Valerie shrugs and smiles. "And you took care of me."

Stop it stop it stop it, his brain screams. Run away from the rogue Psychonaut now before Headquarters finds out. There is no possible way he could ever have a relationship with her. If anyone ever found out, it would mean his job and her new life. He has to be calm, logical Agent Sasha Nein, who does not ever make mistakes and always does the right thing. He has to be Agent Nein, cold, uncompromising and situationally unsympathetic. He can go drink this off later. A few bottles of vodka and this wouldn't even exist. It was what he should've done a long time ago.

But he's already lost Valerie once. He can't lose her again, regulations and job security be damned. In his lifetime he's had his brain removed and put back in, been tortured with nightmare gas, been shot through the spine and watched helplessly as his ten year old apprentice took on a psychic death tank. He can't take any more loss and he's tired of sitting around moping. This is a very un-Sasha-like revelation to be having, he realizes somewhere in the back of his mind. Maybe some of the Frizz's taking-chances-thing is transferring over psychically. Logically he should keep his head far away from hers.

He rests his head up against hers, sighing and smiling in spite of himself. "Well, this is a complete and total disaster."

"Just like old times," she returns happily. "But it's fun."

He kisses her on the cheek, briefly, and knows this won't end well. He knows eventually they'll be found out and the whole thing will blow up in his face. Until then, however, he has her, and Sasha Nein is more than willing to put love before regulation.

Just like old times.


End file.
